Monsters
by NGTM-R
Summary: Trifle not with a 10,000 year old autonomous combat program who has done more damage to the universe with her right pinky finger than you can even imagine. The Wolkenritter are not cuddly. Nor are they to be pushed.
1. Signum

A/N: Insert the character of your preference as who Jail refers to. (I like to imagine it's Amy, myself. Because it's absurdly hilarous she'd beat up Combat Cyborgs.)

**Monsters**

"And your poor partner. I fear they're not going to fare well, Signum." Whether she had simply interrupted Scaligetti mid-rant or he had staged that, Signum didnt really care.

_Agito.__ Leave._ Signum's mental command was short and brooked no argument. The UNISON device made her exit in a hurry. She didn't want to see this.

"And what do you suppose their last words will be? Will they cry out for you, Signum? Their dear monster?" Staged, obviously. As if the last ten corridors of reliving her time with the Book of Darkness were not clear enough that Scaligetti was playing with things he did not understand.

"Fool. Every cyborg you send against them is already dead." Signum cut directly through the control panel, nicking both of Jail's legs, and kicked it out of the way. "What did you hope to gain, Scaligetti, by making me revisit my past? You know I already remember it. Every terrible, sadistic detail."

Jail smiled. "You are a monster, dear Signum. Far more than I could ever be. You simply must admit that."

Signum lunged, flame racing along her blade to cauterize the shallow wound it left in Jail's neck despite his efforts to dodge. "But I know that, Scaligetti." She hit him with the flat of her blade, knocking the mad Doctor to the ground, and left several shallow wounds in his back with quick slashes before he scrambled away.

By the time Jail could turn over, Signum was there again. Levantine's bladed edge pressedly lightly against his cheek. "The only one who does not understand I am a monster here is you. You try to summon a power you cannot even comprehend." Levantine ignited again, burning Scaligetti to the bone, and Signum gave every sign of enjoying his scream of agony.

"I am not some innocent Bureau mage. I am a Wolkenritter. Hell followed in my footsteps once. I am nightmare, I am hatred, I am rage and the death of worlds." She bent down in front of him, Levantine resting lightly against his crotch, as she caressed the teeth exposed by his burned-through cheek with a finger. "Now do you understand why you should never have sought," Levantine shifting rapidly to touch his left hand and igniting, a finger reduced to ash, and another sweet scream, "to see how far I may be pushed?"

No answer. Scaligetti appeared to be trying to think rapidly. Signum sighed and refocused his attention with another lost finger, this one cut off conventionally. "You think you are a monster? You think your infantile efforts are any comparison to what I have done? I have ten thousand years of practice at being malevolent, Scaligetti. I am a monster, to be sure. So terrible no human mind, not even yours, can comprehend. Now say," she placed the flat of Levantine's blade against his neck, "you understand."


	2. Shamal

Shamal stood next to the door, hands cocked slightly, Klarer Wind emitting a little light as she held the spell ready, waiting.

What one Wolkenritter knew, all of them knew, within certain limits of distance. Signum was within the limits. Shamal knew what was going through the other knight's mind. Because of that, somebody was going to pay with their life.

This Combat Cyborg wandering by would do nicely. She felt a moment's hesistation, she was quite fond of the ones from the last round that had reformed, Cinque especially...but this one was new and had shown no morals or emotion at all. The portal opened, they froze in shock, the portal shut, they slumped and died. Not that anyone saw a portal inside their chest cavity, or the hand that closed around their still-beating heart and tore it free. Shamal regarded the thing in her hand with something like disdain, throwing it aside. Blood, quite a bit of it of course. More than she had expected. Shamal had never felt the need to do something so messy, before.

In the old days, it was enough to just rip out their linker core and be done. It was crippling, the linker core represented such an integration into the body, into the mind, that functioning without one was simply beyond most mages. Let the other knights be messy and imprecise. Shamal had always been one for a certain detachment, to accomplish the mission of filling the pages efficiently. So it was here. The Combat Cyborgs she found would die. Quickly, efficiently. Death, though, was so very unclean.

She could live with unclean. It was only a moment's work to use Klarer Wind to clean up, after all. She readied another portal spell and advanced after the nearest Combat Cyborg, which Klarer Wind said was almost close enough to open a portal to. More than one, as well. Perhaps something a little more flashy.

Shamal sent just a little magic flowing through the portal. A mage has various defenses, their Barrier Jacket, their skin charged with magical power, wards, barriers. None of it is of use when the magic does not have to cross any of those. Just a little pulse by the standards of the Wolkenritter was enough to make the Combat Cyborg's head explode, spattering its companion with blood, bone, and bits of grey matter. The other Combat Cyborg was staring at her chest and the bits of brain on it in shock when Shamal rounded the corner and threw a bind at their neck with a flick of her wrist.

She swept on past the cyborg, her defenses shrugging off their attack like a light rain. The cyborg did not yet realize they were even in danger. They could breathe, but that was not enough; Shamal was quite familiar with anatomy. The bind had been too small for their neck and had passed through their skin to cut the flow of blood through their carotid artery, leaving the brain was starved of oxygen. Their world dimmed slowly, soon would soon pass out, and after that their brain would begin to die. With the bind inside them, invisible, their chances of breaking it were very slim.

Just to make sure, Shamal bound their hands as well. It was a simple gesture, a sweep of one arm. Another cyborg appeared, teleporting in and charging. Shamal cast a small barrier spell, judging the height and shape precisely, and the cyborg ran into the shield, clotheslining themselves as their windpipe was crushed. They made quite the pair, one unable to breathe in one fashion, the other unable to breathe in another, Shamal thought with dark amusement.

Shamal moved on, leaving effortless death in her wake.


	3. Zafira

A/N: So yeah, I've actually got one for every Wolkenritter who dates to the Bad Old Days now and am working on a coda to it all. I'm just posting them up a couple days apart. Because. Also, human-looking Zaffie. Because.

* * *

For all their enhanced speed and strength, their special abilities, a Combat Cyborg typically lacks two important things: training and experience. They were not untrained, really, but a living trainer and sparring partner could impart more via a series of lessons than simply having the tapes downloaded into one's head. Book learning not actually done with a book is all well and good, and the Doctor had chosen a good set of books.

But as Zafira was proving, all sorts of people can read books and hence devise counters to the things contained in them. He had more experience at hand-to-hand combat then anyone else alive, and he was enhanced too. Dodge, right hook, deflect with the left, knee to the stomach, elbow to the back of the head as they fold over. Remember to hit harder than usual, it's a cyborg after all. Knockout. Without looking he kicked the cyborg's head into the wall, his experience letting him judge the right amount of force to ensure a nasty skull fracture even to a cyborg, and another kick to break ribs and probably damage vital organs. Inflicting death with metal-shod fists and feet is not a precise science.

He swung around with a kick to fend off another cyborg. They were brave, perhaps, or just foolish, looking like a little child not unlike Cinque. They must have had a good reason to get so close to someone who outreached and outmassed them rather than striking from afar, and Zafira was not about to let them fulfill that purpose. He directed a furious offense against this one, giving them no time to attack or bring their I.S. to bear. Magical construct and experience beat cold steel and youth in about two minutes for another knockout, an audible cracking as he broke their cheekbone and nose.

Another, taller, tougher looking, with a double-ended blade, giving him no time to contemplate finishing the last one. Zafira snorted in amusement even as he ducked the blade. Anyone who really knew how to use a blade could tell you that double-ending it made for an exotic-looking but ultimately less useful weapon. He feinted with his right, then struck them in the chest with a hard left through the hole in their defense left by where they had to hold the blade. It was simple to dodge the downward sweep, the nature of a double blade meant the user telegraphed it by moving their body out of the way of the other end. That left an opening for him to grab a wrist and squeeze as he kicked their legs out from under them. They went down even as he yanked their arm towards him, dislocating it and bringing the cyborg's face straight into his knee as hard as he could

One glance at the mess of their caved-in face told him they were dead. He examined his bloodied gauntlets. It had been a long time since his last battle in human form, longer still since he had literally had blood on his hands. Then turned to the one he'd merely knocked out and looked at them for a moment. Zafira turned away again, advancing deeper into the complex despite the rage that howled in over his mental link to Signum and Shamal, the urge to kill. They had been a worthy opponent, lasting nearly four times as long as their sisters despite handicaps of shorter reach and lacking a weapon. Death might be their fate yet, but they deserved to die better than being casually finished off while unconscious. No, they were a warrior, and as such they deserved to die standing, as a warrior should. That was what Zafira told himself, and there was truth to it.

But there was more truth to the fact he couldn't bring himself to kill a child.


	4. Vita

Vita could feel the…the madness, rolling in over her link to the other Wolkenritter. They were a chorus, each reinforcing the others, feeding back to them. The rage rolled through her, over her, around her, killing rage. She knew it well. For centuries, millenia, rage was all she had. Rage to comfort her, rage to protect her, rage to help her. No other emotion had offered any benefit to a servant of the Book of Darkness.

That was the only reason she kept her head. Killing rage was so familiar to her she could just ignore it. Vita had been with another Bureau mage, an Enforcer officer, at the time it first came over the link. She had left them now; with the other Wolkenritter wandering the base killing any cyborg they found, the Enforcer was in little danger of getting attacked by several, and Vita was sure they could handle any single stray. Besides, she was needed elsewhere urgently. She had to shut this off at the source before it got worse. Or the others might not stop.

And Hayate would never forgive them.

Hayate might even be blamed.

Vita _had_ to stop them. She flew at reckless speeds down corridors that tried to display some truly horrific holograms, some of them things she recognized from Signum's past. Vita shut them out of her consciousness and flew faster, homing in on Signum via the link the Wolkenritter shared. There she was, and the insane Doctor himself. Scaligetti was looking rather worse for the wear, and his mouth was working, but he wasn't actually speaking.

"Signum!" Vita screamed. Not for the first time she wished her voice sounded older and more authoritative. Signum could bark orders and trigger instinctive obedience; so could Zafira. Not her, though. Signum's head twitched, but her blade drew back as well. Vita swore. They couldn't kill Scaligetti. That would just start the stupid mousehunt all over again. "Eisen!"

Several things happened simultaneously. Signum swung, Vita placed a shield between Signum's blade and Scaligetti, and Graf Eisen intoned "**Raketenform!**" The junior knight was off, aiming her blow in a way she'd never actually tried before. For Vita, it was usually enough to get up in their face and hammer them until they stopped moving or begged for mercy. Finesse was unnecessary. But she knew how to aim, how to dodge an opponent's blows, how to work through their defenses. She applied those skills to a different purpose now.

Signum made surprisingly little noise for just having every bone in her hand shattered. Just a sort of grunt. That frightened Vita, for the first time in her life provoking the junior knight to genuine terror. Was Signum that far gone, that she wouldn't even feel pain? How could she possibly stop Signum then? You didn't knock Wolkenritter unconcious. You could wear them down, make them pass out from exhaustion, but you didn't knock them out. They didn't work in _quite_ that human a fashion.

Signum couldn't hold onto Levantine and dropped it. Scaligetti, being Scaligetti, made a dive for the blade and met up with one of Signum's feet instead. Vita batted the blade into a far corner, finding a practical use for all that croquet. Levantine apparently made its own decision at that point as well, and reverted to its storage form. The blade would not fight another Wolkenritter, and it would _certainly_ not fight its own master.

Signum faced off with Vita from just out of Vita's reach. Weaponless, she could still channel considerable magic or attack with her fists and feet as a well as any of the cyborgs might. "Signum, this isn't what Hayate would want!" Vita pleaded. It wasn't in her nature to plead, and she didn't think she was doing it very well. Vita was also acutely concious that even with Eisen, Signum still had a parity of reach with those long legs.

Vita watched Signum tense up braced…but it never came. Instead the senior knight suddenly clutched at her hand and her eyes misted over. Signum gasped for breath, as if she had just surfaced from a long stretch underwater.


	5. Coda

_Excerpt from Admiral's Endorsement to Enforcer Team Seventy Action Report_

…it is the opinion of this officer that the Wolkenritter's resorting to lethal force to complete the mission was both necessary and intelligent. Autopsies of the combat cyborgs killed indicate extensive measures were taken to control them, including chemical dependance and self-destruct mechanisms. The majority showed no inclination to surrender and, as the report of Team Seventy makes clear, one Wolkenritter was injured attempting to subdue them nonlethally. The one cyborg that surrendered is currently in medical stasis to prevent her chemical dependancy from killing her. The principal subject also showed no willingness to surrender and injured another Wolkenritter. Per the mission orders, he was apprehended alive, though he sustained considerable though not life-threatening injuries in the process. The operation must therefore be judged successful…

…No investigation into the use of lethal force is necessary or warranted considering the clear and imminent danger the principal subject posed to Bureau personnel attempting to apprehend him, the _Circe_ itself, and her crew. Despite the traditional reluctance of Bureau awards panels to recognize lethality as a worthy achievement, this officer wishes to recommend both Major Signum and Lieutenant Vita for decoration due to their superlative performance in this operation, as well as Commander al-Faddil for his role in supporting them.

Signed,  
Admiral Chrono Harlaown  
Commanding Officer, _Circe_


End file.
